Supporting the Talanoa Dialogue

The Fijian word ‘Talanoa’ refers to an inclusive process of dialogue where all participants, regardless of power or influence, are peers. After the COP23 adopted the Talanoa standard for a year of open consultation in 2018, the Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network put forward a Talanoa Dialogue Engagement Toolkit.

In order to ensure the participation of stakeholders in the development of clean future finance priorities and metrics, Resilience Intel is curating a version of the CCEN Talanoa Dialogue Engagement Toolkit, focusing on climate-smart finance themes.

Recommended Thematic Areas

To deliver substantive, useful, action-oriented stakeholder insight to decision-makers in the UN climate negotiations, participants should structure recommendations to add insight in the following areas:

Local quality of life / human health considerations.

Incentives / investments in clean infrastructure.

Reducing risk of catastrophic damage from extreme weather events.

Sustainable production of a healthy and secure food supply.

Management of water resources.

Targeted investment in innovation.

Economy-shaping elements of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.

National climate action strategies, playing out locally.

We also recommend that participants seek to identify personal, group, community, or regional experiences — challenges or successes — that might help decision-makers elsewhere identify critical levers of action for rapid decarbonization of industrial and economic systems. More than anything, Resilience Intel means seeing signals that make clear the added value of investing in climate-smart practices.

20-year Future Visioning Process

Since the focus of these discussions is macro-critical resilience intelligence — and relevant insights for the climate-smart financial information sharing system we are building — the 20-year future-visioning process is critical in these sessions. To complete a detailed back-casting from ambitious future goals, the visioning process should proceed as follows:

20-year vision — What kind of world do we want to live in 20 years from now?

10-year vision — Where do we need to be in 10-years, given our 20-year goals?

5-year vision — What specific actions are needed to achieve the 10-year vision?

Meeting Types

Town Hall Meeting — Open Plenary / Moderated Discussion

Short Meeting — Working Session: Priorities

Detailed Meeting — Working Session: Vision

Full-Day Meeting — Working Session: Pathways

All suggested meeting types included in this toolkit center on a moderated discussion process, with varying structural details. The goal of moderation should not be to control the conversation or pre-empt stakeholders’ original inputs, but rather to facilitate a more robust discussion by drawing connections, marking key ideas for follow-up and working to include all who wish to speak.

The end result should be a coherent list of values, ideas, challenge areas, and desired outcomes, that come together to form a useful, concise, authentic report from verifiable stakeholders to the Talanoa Dialogue.

Outcomes can include, but need not be limited to:

A report to the Talanoa Dialogue Preparatory Phase

Policy recommendations for local official action

Stakeholder feedback (from local government and/or the wider community) to regional or national officials

Outline of new partnerships in line with the aims of SDG17 and/or local public-private partnerships standards

Commitments of local action to overall ambition of national climate action plans

Talanoa Submission Guidance

We recommend that any meetings convened in alignment with this toolkit on Resilience Intel related subjects produce a short outcome report, and that this report be submitted both to the Talanoa Dialogue platform and to our team, using the Contact page.

Be Indentifiable — Communicate transparently which stakeholders are represented & be accessible for follow-up.

Be Concise — Make your report a brief to negotiators; link to detailed materials if needed.

Be Timely — There are two Talanoa Dialogue submission periods (one ending April 2, the other ending October 29); plan accordingly.

Submit Here — Make your submission to the Talanoa Dialogue on the official UN platform at TalanoaDialogue.com